Dar_Recap-day3

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Sustainable intensification of crop-livestock systems to improve food security and farm income diversification in the Ethiopian highlands
Project Design Workshop
30 January - 2 February 2012, Addis Ababa Ethiopia

Recap day 3 (Peter Ballantyne)

This workshop provides an opportunity for a broad group of important stakeholders to both learn about the project plans and to share their views on expectations from and opportunities for synergies with the project (days 1 and 2) and for the core project team to finalize the project details (days 3 and 4).



  • Everything you need and everything that has been discussed is on this wiki.
  • For this project, we are using 'Africa RISING' - if you can think of a better name that's great.
  • Where are we?
    • There are 4 objectives (from 2 objectives), 5 outcomes;
    • We have a lot of program framework issues: research design, scale, scope, R4D, assumptions and hypotheses, intensification gradients and site selection;
    • We have for each regional project some specific targets;
    • And then we have on the side another 2 outcomes for coordination and for M&E/comms/learning.
  • We want to work on the targets.
  • Program purpose and objectives were refined and will be used for the overall project.
  • M&E and site selection have to be refined.
  • We have indicative regional targets and assumptions.
Comments:
  • These targets seem not to be research-specific targets but rather development/extension targets. --> Research has long been disconnected from development and value chains.
  • I would like to see knowledge part of these targets.
  • I don't see that these objectives are under the control of research. It takes a lot of resources and capacities to implement this and make this happen. How can we be held accountable to someone else's efforts? --> we are committed to ensure that we strongly influence other partners to leverage these results.
  • Why aren't these partners here if they are so important?
  • This project must have a catalytic role for development partners to develop the products they have.
  • We have to sit down together and come up with a comprehensive plan - and this is not the last planning workshop.
  • We talked a lot about sustainability metrics etc. --> These targets are similar to the USAid targets in the countries of this program.
  • Some partners from the private sector were invited but they have no time to sit for 3 days with us. It would be good to include some targets on RoI and profitability.
  • Nutrition is missing among these targets. It's not simple to measure.
  • These are not just USAid targets but also CAADP country plan targets.
  • These targets are scary, but it really depends on the size of the target population concerned.


What we have to work on for the next 2 days:
  • Management/coordination
  • Program framework (5 years)
  • Activation phase (9 months) (early wins process, criteria and decisions)
    • Early wins (what is the win? Why is it selected? Who would do it?)
    • Site selection
    • M&E
  • Research outputs and activities
  • Targets (with metrics)


Comments:
  • What can we learn along the way?

About site selection:
  • We could look at the targets for the sites that we are zooming in on.